Brown Shoes has an interesting post on local crime, and it made me want to relate an incident we witnessed last summer. I live in the downtown area, on a fair amount of property (2-ish acres), and the whole back section of our lots are wooded. We are on the highest land in downtown, way up on a hill. One hot, hot day, on the weekend of a large festival held every year, John and I drove past a carnival of squad cars, whirling lights and a number of police officers, standing around. The center of their focus was an old beat-up VW van, replete with peace symbols, fuzzy dice ornaments, a Virgin Mary and a Grateful Dead sticker. Just like a Hollywood conception of the archtypical hippy ride. The most compelling thing about this little tableau was the huge mobile HAZMAT unit, with three or four men suited in 50's style, white jumpers and plastic hooded respirators. Clearly, they were "going in." Hmmmn, we thought to ourselves. Not a thing you see every day in a sleepy East Texas burb.
This whole scene was taking place not a full city block from our house, so John thought he'd walk down there and see what was up. Perhaps three minutes after he left,
I glanced out my window and saw a cop running up my driveway, gun drawn. Two more officers followed, brandishing their weapons. Then I saw a non-uniformed man, with a German shepherd, come racing up the other side of my house.
I believe "Shit!" was the first thing out of my mouth, with the second being, "Get on the floor, girls! NOW!" As I lay there with my children, wondering if I was doing the right thing, I began to get angry. And frightened for John, who was out there, evidently in the middle of it. In fact, if he hadn't arrived a moment later, I probably might have gotten a lot more upset. As it was, I didn't have time because he ran in, out of breath, a combination of concern and disbelief on his face. He joined us for a short minute on the floor, then got up, swearing under his breath. A police officer, still with piece in hand, was peering in at us through our dining room window. John went over and shouted through the glass, "What should we do?"
"Just what you're doing!" he shouted back, then disappeared as John sat down again. He told us what he had seen and heard, while we waited for the police to give us the "all clear" sign. It turns out that during a routine traffic stop, the K-9 unit which happened to be in the squad car also happened to detect drugs in the VW van. They ran the driver's name, found he had some outstanding warrants, cuffed him and put him in the back-up squad car. As they began going over the vehicle, they found a sizeable amount of what appeared to be heroin stored inside the door. Rubbing their hands together with genuine glee, they summoned even more back-up and subsequently that enormous HAZMAT truck. Hello, Evening News!
It was a very hot day, so one officer moved the car with the suspect in it under a shade tree. He was supposed to stay with the guy, but gosh, how many people get to watch such a production every day, even when you're a cop? I mean, they were sawing the van in half now and camera crews were rumoured to be on their way. Who wants to miss a minute of that? So the officer in question found himself wandering closer to all the action. A period of time went by (5 minutes? An hour? I want to know!), and turning around, the officer noticed that the suspect was, uh -- gone. He had
kicked out the window, crawled out a la
Duke's of
Hazard
, and then fled on foot.
Now a handcuffed dude with rasta braids, a Grateful Dead t-shirt and bloody legs shouldn't get too far on a summer day, right? But they weren't sure how long he had been gone. Hence the ensuing panic we had just witnessed. I don't know how and when they ever caught up with him, but he wasn't in our yard.
This is frightening on so many levels...
